Today was an interesting day- but let me start with yesterday. I was at the office because Monday is my "work" day, and the leadership team challenged a couple of us to get together and "wordsmith" the core values of Summit Church. Now, I have to be honest and say- one I was like, HA yeah um...I hope I don't have to talk at this meeting, and the other part of me was so excited to be able to sit in and either voice an opinion/belief or not, but I was still taking in the information and developing an understanding of GOD,Truth, Love, and Mission. I am not saying in anyway that we know the answer to these values, but I would say we dug deep. I was challenged to think about why I value God, and why I value Truth....this can really go on and on, but was I owning the ideas we were bringing up? Did I understand why these specific words-ideas-pictures-feelings are valuable to me? I no for a fact God is showing me something big right now-I am not really sure what it is yet, but I really desire to fall into Him. So with that on my mind all day, I brought it home and was trying to get some homework done, and I asked my roommate about the questions I was thinking about. We got into a pretty deep discussion and ended up talking about Hope. Which is where the picture of the sunrise comes in....
She (my roomie) uses the word Hope a lot, like a significant amount...when I don't know of a present to buy her, I end up with something saying Hope on it...anyway- she has been struggling with the definition of hope and what not (I am not going to tell her story here) but, she gave me this clear clear picture of what she sees as hope. "It is like when you get up REALLY early in the morning and you go to watch the sunrise. For a while you are sitting in the dark, it becomes kind of "musty", and you anticipate this beautiful site. This magnificant picture that God himself paints every morning. Then it finally comes...you see the sun start peeking up from the horizon...there is your HOPE!" I started picturing this "painting" and thought, man I want to see this...so I set my alarm-woke up and tried to play it off that it was already light outside-ha...so I got up, (ends up she wanted to do the same thing so we kind of scared each other in the am) and went to the parking garage on campus.
Being on top of this garage and looking into the distance (not so much of a distance because it was so extremely foggy) I began to think-man is this what my life looks like? I could literally not even see a football field distance in front of me. God began to convict me and point out situations, relationships, desires, on and on, but most of all, my relationship with Him. GOD- the one who I had been dwelling on the day before, picking out words, descriptions, etc. about valuing God. I was kind of upset I have to admit, because I was "hoping" for this beautiful painting- but really, the picture painted for me this morning was more magnificant than I have ever seen before. I was looking out into this field of trees, all pretty much the same kind of tree, but some stood out more than others. Todd, our College Pastor always talks about those outside the faith and how our heart should break for the campus. I think I got that picture from the sunrise- I saw this picture, some of the trees like I said, really stand out, they are dark, some have leaves, branches, etc., others were shady. You could see maybe the outline of the tree and even some branches, but not in detail, and then there were these blank spots. I knew there were trees there, but I could not see them. So I related it to this- there are about 10,000 students that are enrolled at FGCU. I know there are Christians, ones that have a relationship with Christ, and ones that don't understand what that means, others who think Christians are hypocrites, some who participate in other religions or spiritual activities, and some who just don't get it-they dont care. Now you can probably match the groups of people with the description of the trees- but my heart began breaking for all of the empty spots...the ones no one have even tried to reach, but then again the ones God himself calls us to. I began to pray and read the Word-as I did, I noticed it was getting brighter, slowly but surley. After a couple of minutes- I looked up, away from my Bible with my eyes wide open to finally see then Sun (or SON in this case?). WOW- I just smiled and could no longer be upset that the sunrise was not this bright and jaw-dropping experience....because it was more than that, it was a picture of God's heart-HOPE....
